


she siezes the sky

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [25]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Birds of Prey (Comic), DCU
Genre: Dark Barbara, Earth-3, Fear, Gen, Owlman is a monster, POV Female Character, Self-Determination, Villains, illa rapit caelum, power, what you are in the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3931786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The owl is the most silent of the raptors. Night-hunter. The most terrifying, ill-omened bird of prey.</p><p>Barbara <em>wants</em> that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she siezes the sky

She felt suffocated sometimes, being her father's daughter. Not because of anything he did, or demanded. Because of the unforgiving eyes plastered to his back, the mute insistencies and nameless dread, impotent duty, the choke of loss where her brother and then her mother should have been.

Should have left with her, gone to Chicago and set up a new life, but it hadn't been permitted, not by the shadow that ruled over them and needed her here to threaten, to keep Dad in line. And Mom had left without her, left her to Gotham and its horrors rather than risk staying. A daughter was only worth so much. She told herself she was glad; Gotham's darkness suited her. Giving up the jagged line of the hills and the dynamic curve of the gargoyles' backs, poised forever to spring into flight, for the tame shores of Lake Michigan, that would be a waste. She was _glad_ her mother had left her behind.

Dad didn't date, even as the fact of divorce settled in and became old news, or even go looking, but she knew it wasn't because he wasn't lonely, wasn't interested, even because he didn't have the time. He just wasn't willing to bring anybody else within range of this curse that he'd brought down on them with who-knew-what. With the softness behind his eyes, maybe. The stubbornness in the set of his jaw that crumbled a little with every year. It didn't matter, in the end.

When she put on the mask for the first time, breath finally came easily again. Swarming over the rooftops like a living shadow, it came easy as the steps to a dance she'd been rehearsing for years.

The freedom wasn't enough on its own for long, of course, the simple rush of running. Before long she had to jump out at people, the shadow leaping from a cranny into three-dimensional life or dropping from the sky like a raptor to its prey. Soon enough, she needed to take prey.

It wasn't much. A double line of scratches across a girl's face because the little ditz wouldn't fucking _cry._ A leather jacket ripped off a young man's back. He wasn't cool enough to pull off the look. A wallet or so, but just for the fun of it. This wasn't about money. Had never been about money. This was _power_ , and the freedom of it.

She called herself Strix, _the-owl-the-witch-the-soul-stealing-shriek_ , and people cowered from the round-eyed mask because most of them didn't know the difference, had no way of knowing she wasn't just another feathery finger of the Court. Fire-red hair and ash-grey rattling pinions. _Beware, beware!_ she cackled sometimes. Other times she saved her breath to fight.

Because dropping out of the sky in a mask drew attention, it was the kind of thing people talked about even if you _didn't_ beat them up and take their stuff as trophies. Fighting vigilante types had been inevitable, and she liked it. Liked the light of recognition in their eyes, the way they said _oho, Strix,_ and _you again_. Liked the challenge of it. Liked letting out all the stops against these stupid, worthless heroes who'd never been able to protect anything she cared about. Liked laughing right back in their ugly faces.

 _He_ noticed her, of course. It took longer than she would have expected; she was almost disappointed in him. Or maybe he'd been waiting to see what she did with her stolen reputation. He was good at that, at waiting. And at hunting.

She gave him a long chase, from the seaside end of Chinatown clear up across the East Side. Knew she was winning (winning her game, not the race itself) because he didn't call any of his minions, not even Talon who always seemed more like a part of the Owl detached than a real boy. Let him catch her, at last, on the roof of the old clock tower.

She fought just hard enough to show that she wasn't just into being chased, but not hard enough to piss him off and get pinned by her throat instead of the middle of her chest, when he won. He didn't recognize her. Not that she thought it would make a difference, probably, but she didn't know what his thing with her father was exactly, vengeance or entertainment or making some kind of point, so she couldn't be sure. But he offered her training and a place in his Court, offered _Strix_ a place, not Gordon's daughter. Offered her recognition, the chance to build more strength of her own and a larger share of his power than the scraps she'd been stealing.

She told him _no thanks_.

He watched her for a few long seconds, after that, deciding whether to kill her, probably. Might be the dent she'd put in Enigma's skull the week before was all that saved her.

Then his face bent in a smile like death and he gave her names. People to talk to, to learn from. Places where all that mattered was the strength of your fist and the will behind it. It was more frightening than anything else about him had ever been, even more frightening than the moment she'd realized that someone had _killed_ her little brother, that the accident was no accident, that she could be next. To be seen through so completely, when even her own father still thought he had a daughter who was no more than a little cold and detached. That Owlman knew so clearly what she wanted, what she _needed_ , without ever seeing her face or knowing her name.

And he let her go.

He let her go knowing she would come back, eventually. That she was worth leaving alive, because she would come back strong or die in the attempt. Give me a mask and I will tell you the truth, and that was her truth: not the collateral of the struggle between her father and his tormentor, not any man's leverage. She was a thing of wings and rending talons. He knew her, she thought, like he knew himself. He knew she would come back.

And she did.

After sculpting herself into a weapon, after years clawing her way up the heap and cutting her teeth on some of the shittiest mercenary jobs on the open market, after taking out three of her fiercest rivals in a two-hour running shootout in Cairo that became a minor industry legend, after earning a reputation as one of those deadly women who was too intelligent to take your eyes off for a second, after surviving a duel with Shiva, after getting technique drummed into her by Dinah Lance, after sniping a target from David Cain and walking away without a hair out of place.

After 'dealer in rare books' turned into 'general antiquities,' and even her cover identity, which was to say her legal self, was smuggling rare poisons into the country in the guise of harmless artifacts. After the Talon she'd once tried so hard to tease any expression out of when they met on Gotham's darkened rooftops went down, fucking up a White House job while she was halfway round the world. After she'd become a name to respect in her field, and could set her own price and cherry-pick the work she took.

She came back, with her coterie, her _own_ feathered minions, and she set herself up just a little way away, in the less inspiring heights of Bludhaven—she had almost forgotten, by then, the way she had loved the inutterable potential caged in a gargoyle straining in the instant before flight—and contacted him, first of anyone after her father. She'd never be his. Never let him contain her. But she was available for hire.

Overseer, now. Allseeing eyes and a heavy, heavy hand. Because Strix had been too much a shade of him, and she had grown beyond that, now. Overseer and her Birds of Prey.

Become what you fear, and it will no longer have power over you.

Barbara Gordon was free as the black night wind _._

**Author's Note:**

> Since I originally wrote this, the ex-Talon Mary Turner joined the Birds of Prey under the name Strix. Oh well. Even if I lose all my originality points, it's still better than Owlgirl. (If I had been Bob Kane, Robin would be named Pipistrelle, so it's a good thing I wasn't.) 
> 
> Of all the Bats, even Tim, Barbara is the only one whose need to control begins to approach Bruce's, and it goes back to before Oracle even if it wasn't as pronounced when her sense of powerlessness-that-must-be-defied came from 'girl' rather than 'wheelchair.' Babs had already abandoned Batgirl when _The Killing Joke_ struck, and while that kind of thing isn't at all Jokester's style, Owlman has the focus and discipline to spend _decades_ breaking a man. Poor Jim.


End file.
